Pascere: ‘Brighton is having a bit of a moment restaurant-wise.’
Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

The most exquisite thing that we eat at this new addition to Brighton’s restaurant scene is the simplest: a tiny crab tartlet with pastry so fragile, you wonder at its capacity to support its quantities of dewy, sweet white Portland crab meat and flourish of airy hollandaise, bisque-rich with the swansong of various crustacea and crabby bits and pieces. This is no-messing brilliance.

But, despite worrying menu descriptions, none of our subsequent dishes has a superfluous element. I’ve allowed myself an evil guffaw at the thought of “English pea custard” with “lavender brioche”. Seriously: bwahahah, and where did I leave my claw sharpener? But it’s serene and mellifluous, the emerald “custard” more like another iteration of hollandaise, vivid with peas both pureed and raw, the brioche crisp little cubes lurking in its depths, the lavender more a frisson of a memory of a scent than anything by Yardley.

Buttermilk sponge with honeycomb and milk ice-cream. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Guardian

Beef cheek tortellini taste like that moment when summer meets autumn: a mulch of slow-cooked meat in taut pasta, the marshiness of mushroom puree, a lively, sparkling beef consommé teapotted on top. And plebeian lamb’s breast is left to shine, with only the different sharpness of ewe’s curd and the saltiness of samphire to distract from the flood of melting fat, with a bed of crisp, pressed potato for ballast.

OK, maybe I could have lived without the dandruff of grated purple cauliflower on a trout dish – both confit and tartare, with various treatments of cauliflower, pickled, roasted, raw – which delivers little other than confusion. But even here, the potentially jarring, tiny, violet-coloured elderflower meringues aren’t nearly as silly as I expect them to be, adding wit and texture.

Pascere – the name is apparently Latin, but who cares when it’s so Google-able? – says it’s in Brighton’s Lanes; technically, it is, but closer to unprepossessing West Street and a part of the seafront more redolent of grubby B&B overnighters lubricated with cheap cider and whelks than a spot of the old fine dining. They’ve colonised part of the street for an al fresco terrace, Lloyd loom-style chairs and frondy greenery just about blotting out Nando’s opposite. Inside, owner Amanda Menahem (formerly food editor of something called Platinum Business Magazine: poacher turned gamekeeper, or vice versa?) has created an Elle Deco-worthy mustard-and-teal jewel of a restaurant; unusually, upstairs, with its open kitchen and bay windows jutting out over the street, is even prettier. Pascere’s originally mooted chef, Brighton pop-up Flank’s Tom Griffiths, was mislaid somewhere along the line, so now it’s Mancunian Johnny Stanford, formerly of the Pass at South Lodge Hotel and Paul Kitching’s 21212 in Edinburgh. What may have seemed a staffing snafu has turned out beautifully.

Sure, there are small niggles: there could have been more than two tortellini, even as a starter; and a “cheesecake” dessert, cannelloni-shaped and needlessly foofed, strays too far from that delicious simplicity. But it’s an impressive meal, peppered with little generosities. Sublime, teeny rolls, one boosted with local stout, the other with onion, come with whipped brown butter topped with something intensely smoky and salty and savoury: crumbed chicken skin, maybe – haunting and not at all unwelcome hints of Caramac. And a remoulade of butternut squash on crisp squash crackers as a clever, unannounced curtain-raiser. I’d come back for the “small plates” menu alone: those crab tarts, summer truffle rarebit, roast cauliflower croquettes, an evolved kedgeree. Oh hell, yes.

Brighton is having a bit of a moment restaurant-wise; like Bristol, another beneficiary of the financial pain of attempting to launch any kind of indie in the capital. Stanford’s old boss from The Pass, Matt Gillan, has launched Pike & Pine; another South Lodge alumnus, Steven Edwards, has the ambitious Etch. Michael Bremner of the excellent 64 Degrees is about to deliver Murmur, and the redoubtable Curry Leaf Cafe has sprouted an offshoot in Kemptown. It’s all go, with a lot of talk of “passion” and “modern twists”, as is contemporary restaurant directive. Pascere will still stand out: its combination of artistry with an underlying understanding of what people want to eat, as opposed to what the chef wants to inflict on us, is Three Bears just right. This is destination stuff. The idea of the classic Brighton dirty weekend just got proper tasty again.

•Pascere 8 Duke Street, Brighton, 01273 917949. Open Mon-Sat 10am-10pm, 11am-6pm Sun. About £33 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service.